Pilot: Re: After Midnight

["C. E. Steuart Dewar" <cesd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>How would I go about setting a reminder, apt, event that passes through
>11:55pm into midnight of the next day?  (ie: 11:50pm-12:20am)  Or is
that
>not possible?  Also...too bad we can't enter exact times into the
>datebook...  I tend to have a lot of things that don't start on 00 or
>05...(ie: train times-- 10:04, 10:09, etc.)  Thanks.


As someone else pointed out, Datekb3 allows times to the exact minute.
We need to send the Palm programmers off to Switzerland where a train
that is scheduled to leave at 10:04 actually LEAVES at 10:04 - not 10:03
or 10:05. In the U.S. you're lucky if that train leaves within 5 minutes
of its scheduled time - maybe that's why the programmers thought a
greater degree of precision was unnecessary?? <g>

The forthcoming V-2.2 (which I have been using now for about 2-3 weeks)
allows appointments that span midnight and which last more than 24
hours. There are some compatibility issues that need to be resolved on
the desktop applications since an event whose end time preceeds the
start time may cause some problems with certain desktops - so far I've
not seen any problems, but am just surmising that this is a potential
problem area that needs to be examined during the beta test which will
start shortly. I have updated dbScan, for example, so it will not
complain about a properly constructed datebk3 appointment that spans
midnight. There is nothing 'special' stored in the Datebook database, so
the format of the database remains unchanged, but having an end-time
preceed a start-time might confuse some desktop Pim's. On the Palm
desktop, for example, an event running from 10p to 4a shows up on both
days as being from  10p to 4a with the 4a slot following the 10p slot.
It doesn't seem to bother the built-in datebook application or the Palm
desktop application and you can edit the text. However, if you attempt
to change the details, it will complain that the end time is wrong
(desktop application) or automatically adjust the end time to the start
time (built-in datebook application).

I am looking at addressing this issue prior to the final release,
perhaps by including yet another special flag that the end time precedes
the start time and then just add 24 hours to make it "legal" for the
desktop application - that may be safer, although it will obviously not
display the time correctly in any desktop application (yes - I am
thinking about writing a desktop version of Datebk3!). However, as near
as I can tell, the majority of Datebk3 users depend more upon the
PalmPilot than their desktop.

In Datebk3, an appointment that spans midnight appears from its start
time to 11:59p (23:59) in the first day and from 00:00 to the end time
in the final day. If it lasts more than two days, intervening days are
completely filled from 00:00 to 23:59. The time is also blocked out
properly in the graphical weekly and the Monthly views. This is
appropriate for say a doctor who is on call for a 36hour period etc.

There are also some issues relating to time-zones (which are also fully
supported in V-2.2). Example: an appointment that runs from 9p-11p in
Pacific Time will run from 11p to 1a when viewed from  Eastern Time and
should therefore show something on the next day. Right now V-2.2 will
display this appointment in the prior day and show the end time at 1a in
the adjustment column with a + after it to flag it as being in the next
day. This presumably is not really a big problem as the appointment at
its local time is really fully in that prior day anyway.

BTW, I am looking for some registered users of Datekb3 interested in
beta testing V-2.2 who would make specific use of the features to span
midnight and who also have a need for time-zone support. I would
especially like to find some people who regularly schedule meetings with
people in more than two time-zones etc. to make sure that the current
feature set handles this to their expectations. If you are interested,
please email me at cesd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I expect the beta test to
start in about 10 days or so. Keep in mind that Datebk3 is a VERY large
application (around 200k) so don't volunteer unless you have the space
to run it!

  ____
 / ___)
( (___
 \____)HEERS!
  ____
 / ___)
( (___
 \____)ESD
Pimlico Software
Home of Datebk3 and WeekView
http://www.gorilla-haven.org/pimlico
.      .      .      .      .      .



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